Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Perils of Mitigated Speech

That would explain why Korean Air planes crashed relatively often until recently. It could also remind us why Meade was proven wrong and why there is no guarantee that Mauritius will be able to weather the current global recession as well as it should have. Demographic luck will get you ahead in life. Poor kids fade behind because their holidays do not provide the same mind-expanding opportunities as those of their richer friends. A hedging program could benefit enormously from learning how rice is grown in the Pearl River Delta.

That's some of the stuff I am taking away from finishing Malcolm Gladwell's latest book Outliers. Great book to read for anybody interested in policy-making along with Freakonomics and The Conscience of a Liberal and can be ordered cheapest from the earth's biggest bookstore by clicking on the picture below.